Thank you for your email and questions. See below for my responses in GREEN.

1. In 2016, Bill 170, An Act to proclaim the week immediately preceding the third Sunday in June as Men’s Health Awareness Week, was tabled in the Ontario legislature to recognize the importance of addressing men’s health issues.

Would your government re-introduce this legislation or support its passage if it were reintroduced in the House?

This particular issue touches me personally. My (male) cousin committed suicide about 10 years ago. The Green Party is committed to increased Mental Health support in Ontario with a historic investment of $4.1 BILLION over four years. That’s $2 billion more than the last Liberal Budget presented a little more than a month ago. We firmly believe in supporting Ontarians when and where they need help and want to ensure that people do not go into debt while seeking the help they want and need. We also support the created of an “umbrella” organisation called Mental Health and Addiction Ontario that would bring together the various government agencies and services that support mental health to streamline the delivery of services.

3. All victims of domestic violence deserve support. According to Statistics Canada’s 2014 General Social Survey on Family violence,

“equal proportions of men and women reported being victims of spousal violence during the preceding 5 years (4%, respectively). This translated into about 342,000 women and 418,000 men across the provinces.”

There are over 177 shelters and residential facilities in Ontario for abused women. There are 0 shelters dedicated to male victims of domestic violence and their families.

Would your government provide funding to support opening Ontario’s first shelter for abused fathers and children?

4. Boys are dropping out of school and enrolling in post-secondary institutions at rates significantly lower than their female counterparts. Children succeed when they have mentors or role models with whom they can readily identify. In publicly funded preschool and primary school the percentage of male teachers is about 16%.

What action, if any, would your government take to recruit men into the teaching profession, in particular in preschool and elementary school?

The Green Party is committed to education, our children and their future. I’m committed to working with the MoE, Boards and parents to work on this particular issue. Growing up this was an issue in my schools (I only had a hand-ful of male teachers). It would have been great to have a male-role model in school to look up to.

5. According to research from the Fatherhood Project, based out of Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital, father involvement is critical to advancing positive health and psychosocial outcomes in children. Children with a strong father-child relationship display higher levels of self-control, are more likely to succeed in school and are less likely to engage in substance abuse.

When a family breaks-up, a child counts on his or her father to continue to provide financial support but also and equally important, to maintain a strong, loving and active relationship.

In Ontario, the Family Responsibility Office recognizes the first need by enforcing child support payments by non-custodial parents. At this time, however, there is no agency in Ontario that enforces child access orders generated by family courts, which is critical to ensure that non-custodial parents are able to maximize involvement with their children.

Would you support expanding the mandate of the Family Responsibility Office or another provincial agency to enforce child access orders?

6. The #MeToo movement has alerted us to a problem with coercive and harassing behaviour in the workplace. The focus now is to develop appropriate measures to effectively address this problem without generating unintended negative consequences. In particular, we must be careful to preserve the underlying moral principles of our legal system, which have been refined over centuries.

What role, if any, does the Government of Ontario have in taking steps to improve workplace culture in a manner that also protects the rights of accused individuals?

The government has a role to play. The Green Party supports empowering the Ontario Human Rights Commission to conduct compliance reviews of public institutions and organizations to ensure policies and procedures are in place that comply with OHRC requirements and to ensure supportive workplace environments that achieve OHRC objectives. Also, we support the Pay Transparency to Close the Gender Pay Gap Act, proposed by the Equal Pay Coalition, which would hold employers accountable to the state of the gender pay gap in their workplaces.